The New Testament

by Jericho Brown

In The New Testament, Jericho Brown continues his tender examination of race, masculinity, and sexuality. These poems bear witness to survival in the face of brutality, while also elegizing two brothers haunted by shame, two lovers hounded by death, and an America wounded by war and numbered by religion. Brown summons myth, fable, and fairytale not to merely revise the Bible—more so to write the kind of lyric poetry we find at the source of redemption—for the profane and for the sacred.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Race, Religion, African American, Contemporary

73 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2014

About the author

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown teaches at the University of San Diego where he is the Director of the Cropper Center for Creative Writing. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, Oxford American, A Public Space, and several other journals and anthologies. PLEASE, his first book, won the 2009 American Book Award.

Reviews

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want Jericho Brown to make music

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful poetry. Brown does lovely things with cadence. You can feel these poems in the face of your chest.

[D.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are poems both harrowing and luminous as the transfigured body, a reshaping of the difficult experiences of living into holy texts.

"We wrote our own Bible
And got thrown out of church"

Brown writes of the soul-making conversation with God and the weaknesses and failings of humankind, but this is not a book of moral instruction or redemption. Rather, it is the chronicle of human passion and an illuminated journey through pain and joy.

So much of what is written as poetry can feel frivolous or excessive or entirely personal. This book is none of those things. It is an intimate and necessary spiritual diary with plenty of carnal pleasures and a true progress of the soul as a place of sensitive engagement and growth.

This is a book that is unafraid to tell us the good news and the bad news too. An honest heart and an honest voice are the brick and mortar of this tabernacle.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am astounded. Usually, the poetry I've read is highly pensive, languorous, moody or scenic. This author's bluntness of blood and death is striking, and uniquely so. The volume will send you back to "the good book" to get an idea of the poem's foundation, but don't be fooled: there's nothing sacred or religious about his interpretation. The poet's hand is guided, not by the Holy Spirit, but by the demons who wrack his soul. What he does with that connection is a bit scary, definitely physical with absolutely gorgeous words. Sex, loss, violence, physical bodies are scattered everywhere, in this explosion of emotion. But, he seems to rely on love as the ultimate redeemer. “love—love / Being any reminder we survived.” Even the cover ("Barber") makes one stare. Does this customer require a close shave or a close throat slit from the barber? Be jolted: read his poems!!!

[Callum McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The New Testament features one of the best opening poems I’ve encountered in a collection. It was the strength of this alone that convinced me to pick up the book, and though none of the other poems quite reached the dizzy heights of the first, I’m delighted to have discovered Brown’s work. Drawing on mythology, fairy tales, and Bible stories to comment on queerness, race, masculinity, and family, Brown’s use of language and imagery is bold and evocative. The poems I connected with on a personal level hit me in the gut, whilst others engaged in a deeply human, empathetic, and enlightening way. To create poems that lay bare raw emotion and individual experience, and yet provoke such social and political resonance is a real skill, but Brown pulls it off here with aplomb.

[charlotte]

this is a fantastic collection. jericho brown has such a grasp on rhythm: the poems feel tactile, satisfying, meant to be read aloud. they are simple, unadorned; they contain vast depths of feeling and experience. certain lines were so powerful they left me shaken. seriously, so good.
favorite poems: homeland, dear dr. frankenstein, after the rapture

[Grace W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[BookChampions · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jericho Brown writes poetry for the heart, y'all. And this may be one of the greatest openings for a book of poems:

"I don't remember how I hurt myself / The pain mine / Long enough for me / To lose the wound that invented it."

Brown's personal work about masculinity and how men love (or fail to love) is one to linger on, revisit, read aloud and listen to. The title is very apt considering the way he raises the personal to Biblical proportions.

Then hop over to the @onbeing podcast and listen to him read some poems from this collection. His voice is just lovely, and he's plain genius!

[Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope to read some more poetry books written by this author. His work came to my attention, browsing at a Best-Of-2019 list. This collection The New Testament from 2014 is a taste of what may be available to read in his other writings. One theme here considers his identity as a son, brother, lover, and other designated labels in human interactions. How is he different from those people whom he describes through their actions and beliefs and their expectations about him.

[rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

jericho brown is a name worth keeping in mind

Hebrews 13

Once, long ago, in a land I cannot name,
My lover and my brother both knocked
At my door like wind in an early winter.
I turned the heat high and poured coffee
Blacker than their hands which shivered
As we sat in silence so thin I had to hum.
They drank with a speed that must have
Burned their tongues one hot cup then
Another like two bitter friends who only
Wished to be warm again like two worn
Copies of a holy book bound by words to keep
Watch over my life in the cold and never ever sleep

[Chris Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

The soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" plays,
while we are murdered,
as God writhes in the beaten dust.

To the magnificent, so-called Deities,
offer up profane prayer and praise.

Executioner as God complex,
the convicted murderer put to death in false-real-time,
the process repeated until surreal time is realized.

God didn't hear her supplications
or any other woman, He is a misogynist God,
let us gather and burn silently.

Chris Roberts, God Ever(y) the Days

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Say the shame I see inching like steam
Along the streets will never stop
Beneath the doors of this bedroom,
And if it does, if we dare to breathe,
Tell me that though the world ends us,
Lover, it cannot end our love
Of narrative. Don't you have a story
For me?—like the one you tell
With fingers over my lips to keep me
From sighing when—before the queen
Is kidnapped—the prince bows
To the enemy, handing over the horn
Of his favourite unicorn like those men
Brought, bought, and whipped until
They accepted their masters' names."


RATING: 4.5/5

I say this about all I review these days but I have wanted to read Jericho Brown for some time. I have come across his work here and there but until a few months ago, his recent collections were both unavailable in India. I did manage to read The Tradition in May on Scribd during my poetry binge. I will reread it before I review it the day after tomorrow. I prefer reading poetry out loud as I can "feel" it more that way and I emote orally. Brown's poems are perfect for that. His words have a vivid lilt, an enchanting cadence. They fit and flow, a bright river of evocative imagery. There are the big themes of course: race, masculinity, faith, sexuality in contemporary US yet Brown explores them in new ways. I particularly like how he juxtaposes theology and worship with desire and pleasure. The body finds an important place in his verse; it's configured and reconfigured, shadowed, and illuminated. So here's acuity celebrated & poems that linger long after reading.

[jamie kim]

mmmmmm this was fire

[Martha Caroline]

Awesome

[Harry Palacio · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Testament by Jericho Brown highly recommended, an incendiary work of chiaroscuro (in poetics) that is both inebriating and wildly- anthropomorphic. With its lingering sweat, and dulcimer of cadence, Jericho Brown has a thrum of rooftop walker at the hilt of a parapet. The governing of desire is albeit somber yet delicate in its solemn requests to satiate the host. The New Testament is praiseworthy in respect to its angling and vicissitude which gives us all (readers) the breath of Amrita and salt. There are days when commingling is a water-bearer of sorts. And we become what is most like our fathers in this matter or our mothers suckle at our breasts at the meager talk of our lives insistence. Wait for the right moments while night transmigrates to some other mid heaven and you will almost have the vesper that is both terminal and delivery for poetry.

[Theodore]

brown poems linger, it touches you, and it feels good.

will begin with the body,
In the year of our Lord,
Porous and wet, love-wracked
And willing: in my 23rd year,
A certain obsession overtook
My body, or should I say,
I let a man touch me until I bled,
Until my blood met his hunger
And so was changed, was given
A new name …

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review appears in issue 5 of Glint Literary Journal:

http://glintjournal.wordpress.com/cur...

[Sha-keh-ree · Rating 5 out of 5]

🎧

Rich. Vivid. Storytelling and poetry at its finest.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

As good a way as any to reteach myself to read like I did before this electoral cycle (which ended, became Transition then climate) is to read two books of poetry a week. Amen.

N’em

They said to say goodnight
And not goodbye, unplugged
The TV when it rained. They hid
Money in mattresses
So to sleep on decisions.
Some of their children
Were not their children. Some
Of their parents had no birthdates.
They could sweat a cold out
Of you. They'd wake without
An alarm telling them to.
Even the short ones reached
Certain shelves. Even the skinny
Cooked animals too quick
To get caught. And I don't care
How ugly one of them arrived,
That one got married
To somebody fine. They fed
Families with change and wiped
Their kitchens clean.
Then another century came.
People like me forgot their names.

[T.L. Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The New Testament by Jericho Brown surprised me with its vivid starkness and unrelenting honesty. As I read Brown's poems, I felt visceral reactions from my head to my toes. I wanted to reach out and comfort the inhabitants of his poems at times and at others I felt tempted to give them a good shake. Brown's lyrical prose jumped off the page and created images that felt at once irreverent and holy. The New Testament certainly gives its own testimony to the life and culture that Brown knows and understands while offering readers a tiny glimpse into that world.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally read this whole collection, after having taught a few of the poems in it—“N’Em” always goes over incredibly well with students. The collection as a whole is beautiful and poignant—great stuff.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best poems i've read "about" Christianity since Cullen. I say "about" because this is such an expansive collection that discusses the Black body, Christianity, the importance of place, the queer experience, and so much more. Cannot recommend enough. Also, the painting on the cover is STUNNING.

[amanda abel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jericho Brown is one of my favorite living poets. His collection Please completely bowled me over in the way he seems to imbue music into his lines. This collection is no different in his use of that skill, and again and again I get caught up in his masterful use of meter and internal rhyme. The flow of the lines somehow makes it easier to read about the terrible things he’s describing. It is terrible beauty, but I’m grateful for it.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoosh...

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Succinct, powerful, metaphoric. Thoroughly from cover to cover. A strong read for Christmas Day.

[All My Friends Are Fictional · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I go to my pocket
For change. One nickel
Fails me, so I find
Another, dead man
At my finger, monument
Against my thumb. Take,
For instance, our love."

[Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brown really is one of my favourite voices in poetry, this collection was great and captures so much emotion.

[Melissa Morrissey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, powerful poetry!

[J Kuria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some faves:

Romans 12:1
At The End of Hell
Another Angel
Motherland
Langston's Blues
Homeland
To Be Seen
The Interrogation

[theo · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Lord, let even me
And what the saints say is sin within
My blood, which certainly shall see
Death—see to it I mean—
Let that sting
Last and be transfigured.”